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Antisemitism in Switzerland Brings Protest from Geneva Jewish Community: Alliance Israelite Rebuts a

December 4, 1931
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The Geneva Jewish Community has published a statement in the entire Press here, bearing the signature of the President of the Community, M. Armand Brunschweig, protesting against the growing antisemitic agitation in Switzerland.

We protest indignantly, the statement says, against this propaganda based on lies and forgeries which threatens to destroy the harmonious relations which exist between ourselves and our Christian fellow citizens. Our unbreakable bond with the faith of our fathers does not prevent us from serving our country with all our energies. Indeed, our religion demands such service from us. We regret that it should be necessary at the present day to make a public declaration of such natural sentiments. Patriotism is not the privilege of anyone. Patriotism signifies that one must not sow seeds of enmity, but seek to bring about brotherhood, and to make it possible for all the vital elements in the country to work together for the benefit of the country.

Geneva, the seat of the Red Cross, the League of Nations, and the International bodies which are striving to bring about the peace of the world, must stand against all attempts that are made to stir up a spirit of disunity, and we hope that all right-thinking people, constituting the great majority of the inhabitants of Geneva, will head our appeal.

A second statement has been published in the Press by the Geneva Jewish Community on behalf of the Alliance Israelite Universelle of Paris, repudiating as a forgery the text of an alleged proclamation said to have been issued by the Alliance calling upon the Jews to weave more close the web of Jewish world domination, which has been circulated in Geneva by a certain Georges Oltramare, who has been issuing here for some years an antisemitic publication called “Pilori”.

The statement, which bears the signature of M. Bigard, the Secretary-General of the Alliance, declares that since its foundation in 1860, the Alliance has never published any document which bears the remotest resemblance to the supposed text circulated by Oltramare.

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